Refinery

Officials of The Charter Co. said they reached an agreement to sell the company's Houston oil refinery to Channel Refinery Inc. Charter also said it had reached an agreement to sell its Northeast Petroleum Industries Inc. subsidiary to Cargill Inc., of Minneapolis, for an undisclosed price. The Houston refinery helped make Jacksonville-based Charter, now operating under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, the darling of Wall Street in the late 1970s.

GUATEMALA CITY -- A Texaco refinery in southern Guatemala will be closed after 37 years of operations, leaving more than 100 workers without jobs, the company said. The refinery in Escuinlta, 50 miles south of Guatemala City, the capital, will close Dec. 31, Texaco said in a statement. It produces 17,000 barrels of petroleum a day. Company officials said the refinery was no longer profitable.

The small, delayed coker at BP PLC 's 337,000 barrels-per-day refinery in Whiting, Ind., which was operating at reduced levels following a fire in July, is operating at normal rates following repairs, a source familiar with refinery operations said on Tuesday. Industry intelligence group IIR Energy had said in August that the coker would operate at 50 percent of its full capacity until mid- to late-September, while BP repaired the coker drum, which was damaged by the fire. Maintenance work continues on the 75,000 bpd small crude unit, the 105,000 bpd hydrotreater and an isomerization unit at the refinery, the source said.

LONDON -- Firefighters battled a large blaze after an explosion at a Conoco refinery in central England on Monday. Two people were injured, a Lincolnshire ambulance service reported. Police received the first report of the explosion and fire at 1:22 p.m. at the facility in Immingham, near Grimbsy, 180 miles north of London.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- Sunoco will sell its refinery in Puerto Rico as part of a plan to trim its unprofitable lubricants business, the company said. The Philadelphia-based oil company said it already has begun sales negotiations but would not give further details about the price or the prospective buyer for the facility in Yabucoa, southeast of San Juan.

TALLAHASSEE -- The Department of Environmental Protection sued current and former owners of a defunct Big Bend refinery Thursday to recover more than $12 million spent by the state cleaning up pollution. The site of the closed St. Marks Refinery, in Wakulla County about 20 miles south of Tallahassee, was found to have high levels of dioxin and petroleum contamination that have polluted the nearby groundwater and the St. Marks River. Dioxin is linked to cancer. DEP started a cleanup in 2002, after failing at trying to get the site's owners to clean it up. The agency said it had invested more than $12 million to dismantle storage tanks, remove contaminated soil and dispose of hazardous waste.

Re "Chevron's refinery, Richmond's peril," Opinion, Aug. 14 The Op-Ed article by activist Antonia Juhasz mischaracterized the Aug. 6 incident at Chevron Corp.'s Richmond refinery and our commitment to the health and safety of our workers and neighbors. Refineries in the San Francisco Bay Area operate under the most stringent air pollution controls in the world. Chevron complies with rigorous health, environmental and safety regulations from numerous local, state and federal agencies that oversee the refinery; in many cases, the company goes above and beyond.

MEXICO CITY -- A gasoline leak caused an explosion Friday that injured 16 workers at a refinery owned by the government oil monopoly Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, in central Mexico. Pemex said four of the workers were seriously injured, and were taken by helicopter to a hospital in Mexico City for treatment. The other 12 sustained lesser injuries. A fire fueled by the gas leak was put out after the explosion at the refinery in Hidalgo state.

Marty Meloe is a hunter, a mountain man and a skeptic. Just the other day, you could count him among the scoffers of the story of the Exxon lions. But Meloe became a believer quicker than you can say ''nice kitty'' after an encounter 200 yards from Exxon's refinery. ''I saw something sauntering through the weeds, and at first I thought it was a fawn,'' the burly security guard said. ''Then I saw it was a lion. About 5 1/2 feet, maybe 70 pounds.'' Exxon, which is spending $5 million to save tigers around the globe, has become Lion Country, USA, this month, with numerous lion sightings on its 250-acre refinery property.

The summer of 2012's widespread refinery and petroleum pipeline problems, as one analyst put it, will mean that many Americans will face record high gasoline prices during the long Labor Day holiday weekend. In California, analysts have blamed the recent Chevron Corp. refinery fire as the main reason the state will see a second straight year of the highest average prices ever for the traditional three-day ending of the summer driving season. But the national average for the price of gasoline this weekend will shatter a record set in the summer of 2008, the year that the U.S. saw its highest overall prices ever, even after adjusting for inflation.

Contaminated gasoline from a BP refinery has so far led to about 6,500 claims from motorists trying to recoup hundreds of dollars they spent for car repairs, a spokesman said Monday. The company, which has fielded about 19,000 inquiries from motorists, last week recalled 2.1 million gallons of gasoline from its refinery in Whiting, Ind. The bad gas affected service stations in three states, including the Chicago region of Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin. Since then, BP has checked its entire distribution system, BP spokesman Scott Dean said.

Black smoke fills the sky in Venezuela after an explosion at the country's largest oil refinery Saturday. At least 39 people are dead, including a ten-year old boy. More than 80 others were injured. Officials say a leak caused a gas cloud, which exploded. That caused two other storage tanks and the surrounding areas to catch fire. Nearby residents said the blast felt like an earthquake, rattling homes, shattering windows and knocking the power out. President Hugo Chavez had declared three days of mourning, though it doesn't take a president to know this is a tragedy.

FALCON, Venezuela -- An explosion rocked the Amuay oil refinery in northwestern Venezuela, killing 39 people, including a 10-year-old boy, a Venezuelan official said Saturday. More than 80 people were injured, Vice President Elias Jaua told state-run VTV. "People are very scared," said Falcon State Gov. Stella Lugo, according to the state-run AVN news agency. "They evacuated the areas that had to be evacuated, but the situation, as the technicians are telling within the refinery, is controlled.

CARACAS , Venezuela — An early morning explosion and fire at Venezuela's largest refinery killed at least 39 people Saturday and left the nation's most important source of auto and airline fuel out of commission. Giant flames and columns of smoke continued to billow from the Amuay refinery, about 200 miles west of Caracas, the capital, into the afternoon. The disaster occurred just six weeks before Venezuela's Oct. 7 presidential election, with the efficiency of President Hugo Chavez 's government a campaign issue.

PARAGUANA/CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - An explosion tore through Venezuela's biggest refinery on Saturday, killing 39 people, wounding dozens more and halting operations at the facility in the worst accident to hit the OPEC nation's oil industry. Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez told Reuters no production units at the Amuay refinery were affected and that there were no plans to halt exports, a sign that the incident will likely have little impact on fuel prices. Photographs taken shortly after the pre-dawn blast showed wrecked vehicles, flattened fences and giant storage tanks buckling and crumpling as flames lit the night sky. A National Guard building in the area was shattered and officials said a 10-year-old child was among the dead.

LA ROMANA, Dominican Republic -- Leaders from 10 countries were meeting in the Dominican Republic on Friday to work out details of a proposed multinational oil refinery called the largest project in Latin America since the Panama Canal. Panama and Guatemala are the leading contenders for the $6.5 billion refinery, which would pump up to 360,000 barrels of crude a day.

BIG SPRING, Texas -- An explosion rocked an oil refinery Monday in a violent blast that shook buildings miles away and injured at least one person, the company said. All workers were accounted for about an hour after the explosion, said Blake Lewis, spokesman for refinery owner Alon USA. The injured worker was in the hospital, but the person's condition was not known, Lewis said. The refinery employs about 170 people and produces about 70,000 barrels a day. Interstate 20 was shut down near the plant, Big Spring police spokesman Roger Sweatt said.

An early morning explosion and fire at Venezuela's largest refinery killed at least 26 people Saturday and left the nation's most important source for auto and airline fuel out of commission. Giant flames and columns of smoke continued to billow from the Amuay refinery, located 200 miles west of Caracas, the capital, into the afternoon. The disaster occured at a crucial moment in Venezuela's presidential campaign in advance of its Oct. 7 election, with the efficiency of President Hugo Chavez 's government a major campaign issue.

The Times of Northwest Indiana reports: Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller says his office will begin an investigation into the recall of contaminated gasoline from BP 's Whiting, Ind., refinery that has made its way into thousands of cars. He plans to release details of the probe later Wednesday. Get the full story: nwitimes.com